Gini Approach for Determining of Regional Digital Divide in Turkey

Information Technologies that provide many advantages bring some problems depending on the usage differences. Differences that occur between those who can use information technology and who can’t has led to inequalities. The issue that has been referred as digital gap or digital divide has deepened and determining the level of inequality caused gain importance by developments in technology. In determining the level of the digital divide computer and internet are often used as indicators, analysis are conducted with statistical methods based on demographic variables. Gini method which is one of the standard tools for the measurement of inequality, is rarely used in digital divide studies. In Turkey, there are no studies to determine the level of digital divide using the Gini coefficients. In this study, the differences between the computer and internet usage levels of people living in Turkey are defined by the Gini approach. The data to determine of these differences were obtained from computer and internet usage research of Level1 Regions in TUIK Household Survey on Information Technology Usage. In this research, it has been determined the digital divide between regions in computer and internet usage is low relatively. Gini coefficients have been calculated among gender for each region and it has been determined that TR9 has the highest and TR11 has the lowest level of the digital divide.